Character and Conduct – 23 October – Mental Hygiene

IT IS poor strategy to wage against evil feelings or propulsions a war of mere repression.   We have seen that this is so in educational control of others.   It is not less so in control of ourselves.   If we would really oust our evil proclivities, we must cultivate others that are positively good.   It is not enough to hate our failings or our vices with a perfect hatred.   We must love something else.   In other words, we must contrive to open mind and heart to tenants in whose presence unwelcome intruders, unable to find a home, will torment us only for a season and at last take their departure.   ‘There is a mental just as much as a bodily hygiene.’ 

The Making of Character, Professor MacCUNN

MOSES said, ‘Do this or do that.’   Jesus refrained from regulations – He proposed that we should love.   Jesus, while hardly mentioning the word, planted the idea in His disciples’ minds, that Love was Law.   For three years He exhibited and enforced Love as the principle of life, until, before He died, they understood that all duty to God and man was summed up in Love.   Progress in the moral world is ever from complexity to simplicity.   First one hundred duties;  afterwards they are gathered into ten commandments;  then they are reduced to two:  love of God and love of man;  and, finally, Jesus says His last word:  ‘This is My commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you.’ 

The Mind of the Master, Dr. JOHN WATSON

oooOOOooo

These quotes are from ‘Character and Conduct’ A selection of helpful thoughts from various authors arranged for daily reading.

Collected by Constance M Whishaw and first published in 1905 as a follow up to her volume of Daily Readings for members of the Being and Doing Guild who asked for an additional volume

In her preface Whishaw writes:

‘This collection of noble thoughts expressed by men and women of past and present ages who have endeavoured to leave the world a little better than they found it.’

It is my hope in publishing them here readers may be inspired to imitate the example of the authors.